Such a Hump Day – Daily Dispatch for 2/27/19

Opening/Random Thoughts

Hey friends, happy Wednesday! I actually have a block of time to do a digest! HUZZAH! How have you guys been? I’ve been really tired y’all. So tired. My job sitch — in which I feel like I’m on an extended probation — is keeping me up at nights y’all. Seriously. I really hope I have a job in six months y’all, and am gonna work to keep it, but hell, if not, I guess I can devote more time to you guys, right? ;)

Beyond that, things are great. My closest friend — who I’ve known since I was seven — is flying in next week for the first time in over a decade. He’s hoping to move out here, so is gonna do scouting fo jobs, places to live and the like, and I couldn’t be more excited. I don’t know about you guys, but in life I’ve found that people around whom you can just be your total self, without any airs or pretense, is exceeeeeedingly rare. Well, he’s one of those folks in my life, so I can’t wait to spend time with him. That does mean no streams next week, as he’ll be our houseguest, but regular content should go on as usual.

Anyway, a lot to talk about for this digest, so let’s get to it.

Today’s Video(s)

This week’s game is Element: Space, which is something of an XCOM-style tactical combat game in which you also apparently have a spaceship (how much the spaceship factors into things, I’m unsure). Since it has a spaceship, and just came out of early access, I figured I should cover it.

Gah, what a waste of my time. I find, as I get older, I have less patience for pushing people around a map in order to kill other people. There are exceptions, and if this game had great gameplay, or a story that made sense, or compelling progression, it might have been amongst them. Sadly it had none of those things, along with an inexplicable difficulty spike a few missions in that’s basically a massive “fuck you” to the player. I couldn’t uninstall this fast enough.

For Descent: Freespace’s second entry, we finally meet the Shivans, and it’s a rough meeting, as we are not in any way prepared for them. I also am apparently running the game incorrectly for the second entry, as I was for the first. The third entry deals with this, and shows the Freespace Open project in all its glory. We also find ways to better deal with the Shivans, thank goodness. So far, so fun!

For last night’s podcast, since we didn’t have a guest, we decided to try out a new structure we’d been discussing internally, which included news, and more extended outros and such. I think overall it went rather well, and with some tweaking, we’ll likely adapt it for future shows.

Finally, as both OBS released a major new version, and Restream.io released a new service, I figured I should try them both, so I did so with Hitman 2. Having just passed the three training missions in the game, I was trying out the game’s first level, a fashion show in Paris (the first level from the first game, which you can play in Hitman 2). I’ll tell y’all what folks, this game is teaching me something nothing else has: patience.

What I’ve Been Playing

Hitman – So after getting both Hitman 2016 and Hitman 2, I finally decided to dive back in after a lot of failed attempts at the second training mission, which is the first unguided mission you have. After completing that and the final training mission (where I used a freaking ejector seat to kill a guy), I’ve been giving the first actual level — a fashion show in Paris with two targets — a try. Boy, this game rewards patience and forces me to be patient, alert and astute in the survey of my surroundings. I’ve gotten caught/died a LOT, but I’m getting a little better each time, and it’s AMAZING. I mean one of the challenges is to kill one of the targets with a chandelier. I WANT TO DO THAT.

Welp, that’s it for nowy’all. Have a lovely rest of your week and weekend, and we’ll see you tomorrow night on the stream for some Divinity: Original Sin!

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Upcoming Events

A Month of Freespace 209/01/2019 – 09/30/2019Every day, for the month of September, we'll showcase a mod or total conversion from the Freespace Open community as part of our celebration of Freespace 2's twentieth birthday. This will culminate with me streaming, hopefully, the entire Freespace 2 campaign on 9/30, the game's actual birthday.

Game of the Week - Descent: Freespace09/16/2019 – 09/20/2019We'll continue to plow through Descent: Freespace in preparation for playing the entire FS2 campaign on 9/30.

Tachyon: The Fringe - Classic Space Stream09/16/2019 at 8:00 AM – 12:00 PMWe'll take a break from Space Rangers today to start a new series of Tachyon: The Fringe!

Strike Commander - Sim Game Stream09/17/2019 at 8:00 AM – 12:00 PMToday, if I can get it to work, we'll begin playing the classic Strike Commander

Other Ways to Support SGJ

On the Next Podcast…

9/10/19 5:00 PM Pacific – On the next podcast, we’ll talk about games that are deserving of sequels! Be sure to tune in on YouTube, Twitch, Mixer or Steam, and be sure to check the calendar for even more upcoming shows!